Rutherheim – Because it was cool

Changing Perceptions one mind at a time

Category Archives: SEO

So…I just got spammed

I am looking at the back-end of my blog here in the comments section. At this stage I can un-ashamedly say (because I am just starting down the blogger’s road) that I have not had one honest comment.

I have however had more than 100 spam comments and I am a little sick of it. Spam must be the biggest waste of time and energy that any marketing endevour in the infinite universe could ever engage in.

I mean you are wasting you time(Spammer), your clients time (If you have a client that stupid), the blogger’s time (As an intermediary) and, most importantly, my time – the end user. Have we not yet gotten to a point where we can move past this? Will these spammers ever wake up to the fact that there is an entire industry dedicated to stopping that little insignificant message they sent from reaching the destined target. Did it occur to them that this is just not going to work anymore?

More over how can they blatantly ignore what the consumers are saying, “Stop sending me Shit!”

Latest thing to happen to me is Spammer’s jumping onto a trend on twitter and just tweeting the heck out of their stuff using the hashtag….really…. your Viagra has nothing to do with the effectiveness of fiscal policy changes.

I am now joining the parade of people saying,”Enough, please just F@#K off”.

If I want something ill do what 90% of the world do…Ill google it

Why in the absence of greatness do we settle for Mediocrity

I bet you read the article title and thought.. “Wow, this sounds really insightful, deep and potentially life changing”…or you did not. If you did, I am sorry. This is not life changing unless you believe that the way you approach the web for your business will change your life.

If you do believe that the way you approach the web for your business will change your life, then you are in the right place and I am glad you are reading this (mostly because I just hope someone somewhere reads this and I’m not writing so the ether can have a laugh at my expense).

Right, so that’s out the way, lets get going.

It has come to my attention recently that companies in some places (worldwide but ,yes, South Africa I am talking to you) still lack the insight to see not just the inherent value of the Internet but the potential for greatness that exists for those willing to take the first steps. My experience with selling is limited (I prefer the technical side of online reputation, SEO and Marketing) so I don’t presume to say that I have invariably identified that South African business owners are incapable of seeing the value of the Internet. However in my interactions with the account managers and sales team the same situations come out. The issue of money and perceived value.

There is this pre-conceived notion that digital marketing is the sum total of, “Get a site, put it up” and “Its cheap marketing”. I have heard “Ya but I have a guy who will do it for R2000″ too many times from our beleagured sales team. So for those of you who are actively reading this, listen close….There is nothing cheap and easy about online marketing. The value inherent in Online presence is:

1. Measurable ROI
2. Reach (Huge and growing Market)
3. Dynamic
4. User centric
5. Opportunity to engage actively with clients and prospects
6. More and more and more…..

There is no better measure to the growing value to Online presence than the attempt by large (very large) brand and advertising agencies to incorporate a digital division into the fold. Most of these have failed somewhat miserably…why? Online is its own business, its own style and requires a different vision and style to master it. One company (not mentioned) created and entire team of 17+ people and had to let them go a couple of months later due to a lack of cohesion and being unable to deliver the results.

Let me reinforce this sentiment with an old time saying. Now imagine I am saying this to you in the voice on an old American man from Texas, “If you want something done right…do it yourself”. In a side note the old man passed away…about ten years ago. This does NOT work… I have seen it fail. If you want something done right get someone who knows what they are doing and be prepared to pay for the work. Stop complaining because you cant wrap your head around the fact that world has moved on and because all your “friends” are telling you “it only costs like R2000″.

What many of these ‘Fly by night’ companies are not telling you is that your online presence is more than just your website. In fact a site is almost useless if you are not going to try and get it ranked, interact with it, communicate with it and join the online community. Essentially you are just going to take up space.

By no means am I saying that if you have very little capital or cash flow that you should completely ignore online presence. Many digital agencies offer comprehensive services on a retainer basis that they will tailor to your needs. But there are some basics you should keep in mind.

1. If you are getting a quote on a site that is more than 5 Pages and less than R8000 then you are going to waste your time
2. If you are going to try and run an ongoing online strategy with a retainer of less than 5 hours a month… you are going to waste your time and money
3. If you do nothing… you will eventually fail.

So to wrap this up go and google the below:

- Search Engine Optimisation
- Online Reputation Management
- Social Media Optimisation
- Social Media Management

Now picture your bottom line….

Now imagine yourself 5 years in the future….

Now deduct 20% from your bottom line in real time value of money because you did not do your research

Happy hunting :)

What happens next?

Today I mused on the idea, ‘What happens next with the online world?’. The reason I found myself asking this is simply because the online environment is ever increasingly competitive. With an Estimated billion businesses worldwide what happens when all of them are online. What happens when only ten results are available on the first page of Google but there are ten trillion sites?

Surely there has to be a saturation point or will we just keep competing for the top ten positions?

(Google may have started out as a little guy trying to give to the community but make no mistake they are a business now and they control about 75% of the market for search results.)

Aside from Google the point remains the same on competitors like Bing and Yahoo. There are still only a few positions available which are good for business. Further to this are the industries that have been built around Search Engines.

SEOs, Online marketers, Social Optimizers are all reliant on the ability to generate ‘presence’ online. With , what I expect to be, the massive influx of websites to the online world how much harder are these jobs going to become? Will these jobs become Professions?

Personally I have a sense that the online world is going to need to be bigger than Google, Bing and Yahoo. I have a sense that niche segments will need to arise which become the authority on sectors. As communication evolves so must the platforms on which we communicate. Yes Google will most likely never go anywhere and it is necessary to have a central source but surely the way we share information will change.

Social media has already begun what will end in the revolution of information – an ongoing revolution that will change from generation to generation.

From an SEO perspective I would suggest that (and Google says it too) optimization should focus on content. Not just what you are going to say but where are you going to say it? Why are you going to say it and how are you going to say it?

But that is only the beginning. The next (more complicated) step is listening…. Find out what people are saying. Monitor the message and adjust it appropriately.

It has been said ,and flung around with indifference, over the last 5 or 6 years but it is still resoundingly true, “The consumer controls your brand”. So you had better be listening to what they are saying

What used to be a simple technical tweak here and there has changed and called upon SEO and Online Marketers alike to join forces to generate strategies that work.

By work we mean get your market share, develop presence, reach the market and Up the ante at the Bottom line.

Companies who have been keeping their heads neatly hidden in the sand are going to be unceremoniously flung into the present when their bottom lines start to… well bottom out. Generations change and the way we communicate evolves.

SEO, ORM, SMO, SMM, SEM, PPC… these are terms you need to know and if you don’t get someone who does. The world is getting smaller, that means it harder to keep your little part in it.

I did it my way!….SEO for the SME (and a little more)

I sat down today to write a ‘how to’ for SEO (Search engine optimisation). I had begun with  the adage “Top ten things you need to know…” etc. Halfway through I realised that (and this is a completely subjective opinion) really there are a large number of SMEs that could (with the right set of tools) run their own SEO at a start-up stage of Online Reputation creation. In no way does this mean that a multi-trillion operation should attempt to understand and run their online relationships without professional assistance, but a small 1 – 10 man (or woman) operation could quite easily take the first few steps in establishing their reputation online without breaking the bank.

Suffice to say that this article will give you a quick up and over for the initial SEO wall.

This article is going to address Social presence, basic keywords, and site Validation (It will be brief)


So lets begin with the basics. You will need:

1. Steady Internet connection
2. Company website (Please put some time into having this made well)
3. A web professional (Does not need to be an SEO or SMO specialist)
4. Working knowledge of the on line world (You can google)

There are people who will tell you you need facebook and twitter no matter who you are. They are lying to you. The first step in deciding how to tackle your online reputation is to know your brand and you clients. Think of yourself and the people you address.You would not expect to follow the local Milkman on Facebook and twitter, but you may still google him. The demographics of your clientele are paramount in deciding the way forward online.

None the less, for the sake of this article we will assume that you need what is presented and that you have a website. If you have no website I suggest calling Chuck Norris to roundhouse kick you into reality.

So lets go…

Keywords:

Any decent web developer will know to add keywords to the site text and the meta tags. What you cannot expect your basic web developer to do is keyword research. Either  you should do it or (preferably) get a professional to to it.

Keywords are the webs way of knowing what you are all about and if you should be delivered as a possible solution the the search user. In this way keywords are tantamount to the success of any website. So spend a little time:

1. Know thine self…. Who are you? What terms have described your company from the beginning? What do you do? What do you sell?
2. Check out your competitors. Go to google/yahoo or bing and search the terms you would like to rock up for. See which competitors are there. Open one of their site and do the following:

  • Look at the text on the site: What have they written and how?
  • Hover on the site and right click. In the menu that opens scroll down to ‘View Page Source’ and click. Look for titles like meta = “Keywords” and see what keywords and phrases they are competing for
  • Repeat with two more sites

 

Google Keyword tool:

Go to Google Keyword tool and input your chosen keywords. Google will provide a selection of keywords similar in nature. Use a combination of competitive and non competitive keywords

Once you are happy with you keywords place them into the pages of your site. Please save a copy of your keyword selections somewhere

And that is keywords (Kinda)

Creating online presence:

 

Facebook

1. Go to www.facebook.com
2. Create a PERSONAL profile (Create a profile for you as a person – If you have an individual or individuals who are already connected to FB then use one of their profiles)
3. Create a Facebook page: A Facebook page connects a business, Cause, Charity etc to the users profile. This means that the page is immediately available to the people following the Page owners. Always better to use a page rather than create a new unique profile. (see http://www.socialmediaiq.co.za/social-networks/how-to-create-a-facebook-business-page-public-profile/ to create a page)

Twitter

1. Go to www.twitter.com
2. Create a profile and start by following some interesting people (in your genre). The profile can be person specific or company specific
3. Tweet (Introduce yourself to the community: Who you are and what you do, use a # tag so you show up on searches)

Website

1. Take the links to your Twitter and Facebook account and add them to your home page
2. Get a like button for Facebook here and get your webmaster to add it (Get some cool online vector icons or, even better, a graphic designer to build them for you)
You can get the “like button here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/”

Get a blog…

If you feel that you are really good at something and your knowledge would be useful to others then blog it. You can use Blogger, WordPress, Drupal and many other platforms to get what you say out there. Most of the blogs will allow users to comment. You will get some negative ones so be ready for that and don’t let it get you down. Blogs also generally provide you with statistics which can be very helpful in seeing how you are performing. Another great thing about Blogs is they create another source for inbound links to your site

So now you have created you social presence but how do you manage it.

Management tools:

 

Manage your profiles:

I suggest using Hootsuite to manage you profiles. It is a nifty tool that allows you to manage posts and tweets from one location. You can get it from www.hootsuite.com. It is a free tool but you can upgrade to a pro account once you get serious with your Social presence. It is a great little tool and easy to use.

The great thing about well managed social profiles is that it gives your site good inbound links that will help you reach the SERPs.

Inbound links are one of the most NB items when it comes to SEO (In case I had not made that clear)

Listen Online:

You need to know who is saying what online. This is possible using a programme such as Radian 6, Saidwot or (My favourite) Brandseye. These help manage you online reputation management and track sources of conversation.

A good ORM tool will:

1. Provide Keyword and Site performance stats
2. Provide recommended actions
3. Give an insight into a competitors site

The reason I specifically mention Brandseye is that it is particularly user friendly. However before you suddenly wet your pants from excitement, these are not free tools. They have a valuation period but after that they will charge you. More than that they are not cheap when you are an SME. We still recommend, if you can, that you use a good ORM tool

Lastly I want to emphasise something I began checking lately. There is an organisation called W3C (World Wide Web Consortium – www.w3.org) who can give you almost anything you need to know about website and website design. From here there is a tool called the ‘markup validator” that gives errors and warnings with regard to the Markup language used by the site. You can use this tool to see how many errors and warnings a page has. It will also help to tell you which browsers will give your site a problem with a specific error/warning. This will also affect your SEO as Google will see these errors and your users will have a negative experience if your site suddenly starts resizing Div tags etc.

Don’t stress yourself out if your site has 10 errors and a warning. It is not the end of the world but I recommend at least checking that the site looks the same in all browsers, has a backup in case Javascript is not activated in a users browser and that no links are broken (Google hates broken links). Most Web development tools like Dreamweaver have this standard in the newer versions.

With the validator you can see where your code is falling flat and then find a way to correct it.

Right, so to summarise:

Get your keywords and Validate your sites Markup (Google keywords tool, www.w3.org validator)

Social Media:


1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Use Hootsuite to manage

ORM:

Get a good tool to monitor your online presence and manage mentions.

I know this is a very ‘Scratch the surface’ article but it is meant for the somewhat technical advantaged people in the world. if you can blog, tweet and post then it is probable that you can manage a Online Reputation for your company while in its infancy.

Best of luck and when in doubt ask someone who knows.

The SME Online Marketing and SEO toolkit

So you are one of the little guys but you understand the need to get online and go as big as you can. You don’t have the budget for the bigger tools like SEOmoz and Saidwot so how can you effectively manage your online activities.

It is more than possible to do so with some very basic tools and a little know how.

So lets begin. In essence you need to manage


1. Site traffic
2. Social Media
3. Blog
4. Keywords

Site traffic:

Site traffic tells you how many people are going through to your site. This can be viewed over a time scale of your choice using certain tools. The most widely used is Google Analytics. This Google created tool will give you statistics on site traffic for your site. It can also monitor social traffic. It is easy to use and gives you plenty of “how to” information

Social Media:

In a previous article on SEO and SME I stated that when you choose your networks they need to be appropriate. However as standard the ones to keep in mind are:


1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Linkedin
4. Foursquare

A nice tool to manage these from one point is Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to create posts, schedule them and send the same post to multiple locations. Also it is free to run one account.

Blog

If you have something that is interesting, entertaining and engages your audience then blog it. You don’t need to be a master author but you do need to be literate and informative (not boring). You can use any number of blogging platforms but the two I like are:


1. WordPress
2. Blogger

Keywords

Keywords are what the users will look for when they perform a search on a search engine. These words let the search engine know that your site/content is providing the information that the user (person doing the search) is looking for. It used to be an SEO (search engine optimization) staple to have your keywords in your meta tags and through out your site but this is generally no longer the case. Keyword density does not form a large part of good SEO in today’s online world. However good keyword research does.

To this end one of the best tools is Google Adwords keyword tool.

So there you have it at the moment. Short simple and a good start.

There are many other tools available to you. All you need to do is take the time to look and learn. I have just pointed out some of the basic ones I like to use.

Good luck with your online endeavors

RO@R